Conquering fear to pedal forward: emotions and learning in high-risk sports

Abstract

This paper examines how elite BMX athletes experience, negotiate, and work with fear in the professionalised environments of high-risk sport. Rather than treating emotion as a psychological variable to be regulated, the study adopts a pedagogical lens, conceptualising fear as a resource for learning that is shaped through relational, contextual, and embodied processes. Guided by an interpretative-constructivist framework, a qualitative multiple-case study explored how professional riders engaged with emotions across training and competition. Four themes were identified: emotional responses to new challenges, the role of supportive relationships, developing confidence in competition, and cultivating mental clarity. Findings reveal that fear is not simply a disruptive state, but a pedagogical signal that guides decision-making, structures progressions, and fosters emotional literacy. Athletes described negotiating fear through reflection, relational scaffolding, and embodied routines, demonstrating how emotional intensity can enable, rather than hinder, learning. These insights extend phenomenological, psychological and sociological accounts of fear by foregrounding its pedagogical significance in professionalised action sports. The study contributes to sport pedagogy by positioning fear as central to athlete learning, highlighting the need to preserve emotionally rich, peer-based, and context specific learning practices as action sports become increasingly institutionalised. It calls for coaches, educators, and practitioners to embed emotional development within training environments, recognising it as integral to both skill acquisition and long-term athlete development in high-risk sport.